– New futures contract on the Bloomberg High Yield Credit Index to be launched on 17 October 2022
– Flexible tool to hedge the euro corporate bonds market through a standardized, cost effective and centrally cleared solution
As of 17 October, Eurex will offer market participants the opportunity to hedge the euro-denominated high-yield corporate bond market in Europe. For some months now, this segment has been subject to higher volatility, primarily driven by rising inflation, higher interest rates and a divergent market sentiment. Funding conditions for corporate issuers have become less favorable, which naturally leads to wider credit spreads for Euro denominated corporate bonds.
“Volatility and a higher perceived risk for the future have increased the need for hedging by market participants invested in this asset class. Therefore, we have designed a cost-efficient and centrally cleared instrument that allows our customers to efficiently manage their investments and thus also helps to sustain liquidity in this challenging environment” said Lee Bartholomew, Head of FIC ETD Product Design at Eurex.
To leverage established benchmarks that Eurex customers are already familiar with, Eurex’s new High Yield Index Futures will be based on the Bloomberg Liquidity Screened Euro High Yield Bond index. These standardized, exchange-traded contracts utilize a simple derivative structure widely used in the equity index futures market. The versatile nature of these futures will enable investors to take long or short positions. Clients can either hedge Euro high yield corporate securities held in their investments or take additional exposure via an index-linked product, which broadly represents this market.
With the Eurex High Yield Index Futures, market participants will be able to further adapt their investment and trading strategies, taking advantage of the higher volatility of euro-denominated sub-investment grade securities.
